How do I win the final battle? *spoilers*

[amills1]

I'm not sure how I'm supposed to win this fight. Balastar keeps recovering HP every turn and I can barely even scratch him. His attacks have been devastating my troops' health and resources. I thought I'd just about bested him, when he starts using attacks that restore his HP. How am I supposed to keep up with that? He's immune to status effects and my spellcasters are nearly out of spells entirely.

[amills1]

I tried rolling back to just before I faced him. It's still too damn hard. His life drain attack means I pretty much can't chip away at his health fast enough - especially since he often crits which one hit kills whoever he is attacking. Seriously? The game was fun up to this point, now it's just unfair and aggravating.

[jrel]

I beat Balastar with 3 sharpshooters, 3 magic users and a ranger, with far enough range so that he won't counter attack. When he uses his flame tornado environment attack, run away, then let him follow you. When you see the target meter on him, he will use his life steal attack so try to get your units far away, or let the one with the strongest defense and guard to take the attack (I used the mages with the shield spell or a vanguard with the unique shield). He has 3 life bars, so only attack with melee units on his last life bar. I also spread my units far away to avoid the summon attack.

But yeah, the difficulty spike was immense.

[amills1]

OK, thanks. I think there are several main things working against me in this fight. The first, is that I didn't realise I'd be facing a fire immune enemy at the end so I still had fire spells unused. The second was that I also had AoE spells left which were of little use. The third was not enough rangers - the distance they can shoot from really helps.

[undermensch]

Yeah, that fight is awful. Pulling auto-heals and 999 damage spells out of thin air because he's got a fire demon in him while the lightning demon in the hero decided to clock out early is rubbish.

[amills1]

I've not tried this mission again yet. But, after thinking about it, the other thing that really bugs me is the need for some many long range archer units (rangers and marksmen) in order to be able to hit from outside of his counter attack range. If you don't have enough character specced in that fashion, you could be out of luck. It really doesn't help that one of the characters I had as a ranger suffered from a plot determined death either.

[Harikajo]

just finished this battle.. on normal when Balastar was last enemy i still got 4 green units from last wave of reinforcement. And i kept them alive almost till the end. (2 bishops and 2 templars helps a lot). Also had only 1 mage in group who just stayed in corner without spells >_>

[sgothe]

Had to remake my party to beat it on a second try. This is on Hard.

first try was 4 templars, 2 sorcerers, 3 bishops, and 1 warlock. Ran out of offensive spells and templars didn’t have enough damage per round to kill him.

second try was 4 templars, 3 bishops (each had all 3 offensive light magic spells), 2 sharpshooters, and 1 ranger. Two of the bishops ran dry of offensive spells on the last turn, but I beat him with 7 turns to spare.

key seems to be to rely on ranged attacks to limit counter damage, and if you do bring spell casters, makes sure they have A LOT of offensive spell castings.

[Jo]

Bishops are healers. Not surprising they run out of offensive spells. Why not bringing in more sorcerers?

[sgothe]

I am conservative with bishop numbers because they generally do enough damage to kill things in two hits, 8 offensive casts is usually enough in a mission, and I would rather have the healing available, if I need it, than do the extra damage that usually isn't enough to one-shot.

I think sorcerers biggest asset is AOE damage, but that is seriously hampered by the length of this mission and having only one AOE cast per spell slot. If I need more damage for this mission I would slot in more rangers (2 sharpshooters is enough marksman's aim, and ranger’s speed helps a lot in this mission)